


To Your Heart's Content

by overtture



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Blue Sonder AU, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Demon Powers, Family Dynamics, First Meetings, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, PLATONIC relationship study that is, Relationship Study, Time Skips, headcanon heavy, or are they...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:34:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27516952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overtture/pseuds/overtture
Summary: Between homesickness he loathes and the past he can’t escape, Technoblade finds that terror concerning the demons and angels he shouldn’t care so much about and the guardian he should is a little too much to handle all at once.Typically, it’s easy to manage. His new life comes with friends that are supportive beyond measure after all, even if they don’t know the truth of his nature.Occasionally, though, the Voices love to remind him exactly who he is.(Or, in which gentle Guardian Philza is terrifying in the eyes of a Demon King, there are consequences you just can't escape, and trauma isn't always so easily resolved.)Blue Sonder AU.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), Technoblade & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Toby Smith | Tubbo & Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Comments: 5
Kudos: 442
Collections: Blue Sonder AU





	To Your Heart's Content

**Author's Note:**

> this was. strange to write. bear in mind, i currently have 24k words down in fics i havent completed for the mcyttober prompts i decided to write for before the blue sonder au overtook my brainrot, and i still plan on completing them ( i have about. four of them done? five? meh) but i just really, really love theorizing this kinda stuff, so POG enjoy my headcanons!! sorry this isnt an Actual Fic and more of a drabble thing, promise i got more stuff on the way. more blue sonder, more vanilla mcyt, and more misc stuff :]
> 
> big thanks to the blue sonder discord for just being themselves yall r crazy mfers i love yall <3 <3 <3

Philza is a frightening sort of being.

It’s not something Technoblade admits to himself without gravity-- it’s simply that the being had a terrible and powerful ability. One that threatens everything Technoblade had ever worked for, sacrificed for, _hurt_ for.

It’s a power that threatens. It’s a power that haunts. It summons forth paranoia, fear, and doubt within the afflicted. Stronger than any other Hellish power he’s ever witnessed or heard of.

No smart ruler is fearless. The most cunning respect what they fear, learn to control it, use it to their advantage. Any weakness could be made into a strength with enough force of will.

Fear is simply another tool to get ahead. Fear brought adrenaline, small sparks of energy and magic in the bloodstream that lurched, carried your body further, faster, stronger. Technoblade knows this. It is a fact of his life. A law in his inner code.

The Overworld- sorry, _Earth-_ doesn’t help much. It doesn’t help at all, actually. It’s the most deceptively deadly place he’s ever encountered outside of the Wastes of Hell.

The soil is soft and shifts underfoot, hiding sharp shards of stone and occasionally attempting to eat his limbs whole when he presses in certain softer, wetter places. The sky seems as though it wishes to eat him whole, as though he could drown in it. It’s the same shades as the seas and the oceans, his Hellish gaze unused to such a change in light, in color. There is no roof, no matter how high he manages to go while wingless. At least in Hell, if you couldn’t see the ceiling, you could rest knowing one was still there.

There is no stealth in the fields with none of Hell’s infinite smog, no white noise of an active undead world to muffle your breathing, disguise your footfalls. He’s never been so out of his element, so vulnerable.

The Gods shine down at all times from this endless sky, an endless sea, one large swath of blue that just stretches, reaches, curves from one into another until the edges swallow the Sun.

When Technoblade first arrives upon Earth’s surface, he wonders if maybe he swam far enough out, he could watch the water’s surface boil and blaze as the ocean swallowed it whole. He wondered if it would be like Hell’s summer floods, lava and magma tides rising to swallow the fields, burning everything in its path.

It brings back an awful homesickness. It’s a feeling he loathes more than anything in the worlds. It was the one feeling that evaded his control, the one ball of unspeakable, unholy fury that scalded him without fail. 

(he could go home, couldn’t he?)

He can’t go back.

(go home.)

Not now. 

(hell needs him.)

Not like this.

(hell needs a king.)

Technoblade drags his claws down his arms in frustration as the haze over his mind thickens, the dulled out sensation of pain heaving him into a place between awareness and unreality.

He didn’t want to go back.

(but he had to, didn’t he?)

He doesn’t want to go back. He didn’t have to-

(go back.)

(go back.)

(GO BACK.)

(GO BACK.)

Technoblade traces the deep ridges of warped scarring that criss crossed his face. His claws catch on the uneven depth of them.

(scar tissue is thicker, but weaker than regular skin untainted by hell’s touch.)

(just like you.)

His blood comes in thin rivulets, small strands that trickle, trickle, trickle, mesmerizing.

The grass below, between his splayed handfuls of dirt, sizzles and pops, small wafts of smoke rising as they began to burn away. 

(hell is your only home. even the earth rejects you.)

“What are you doing?” Someone booms, voice projecting farther than the cramped pines should realistically allow. Pure powered weight rests in those words, a heavy blanket that settles over his demonic core with an artificial fear. “What-- oh.”

Technoblade lifts his head, delayed reactions and dizzy disorientation stalling his uneven rise to his feet. His tongue is heavy, but his axe is a familiar weight.

“Are you hurt?” Someone asks, voice far away. It sounds like the same being, despite the single-dimensional quality to it, not quite echoing in his core but still ringing in his ears all the same.

Technoblade turns around and is immediately struck as their eyes aligned.

Philza is a frightening sort of being. He can look at people and just... see them for who they are.

“You look rather tired,” he says, approaching and extending a hand. “Would you like some help?”

There’s a kind crinkle to his eyes, despite the otherworldly aura that bleeds from him. It bleeds the same way the viciousness of Hell does, the intensity of the Wastes in the lines of his carefully relaxed posture.

The Voices are entirely silent. Not even a whisper.

For once in his life, Technoblade feels very, very afraid. Wholly and completely. Despite this, he can feel his own tension dissipate.

(something stronger than you. it makes you feel small again. powerless.)

(but you want to feel that way again, don’t you? this much power is too much, isn’t it?)

(this isn’t the kind of power you can run from.)

“Yeah,” he replies weakly. “That’d be great.”

Techno takes his hand and steps into a new life.

* * *

His scars pulse in a fast-paced duet with his racing heartbeat. His left horn still aches, a deep-rooted agony where blood still spills freely from within, it’s dark peripheral missing on the edge of his sight.

He was sure if he looked through the dust and smoky remains of the torn field, he would find its shattered remains. INSTEAD, HE’LL TAKE ONE FROM EACH OF THOSE WHO DARED CHALLENGE HIM ON THE EVE OF HIS ULTIMATE ACHIEVEMENT.

The demon before him lets out a shriek as their towering fifteen-foot form suddenly explodes into thick clouds of steam and smoke, their child form crashing to the ground in a heap. 

He has to KILL THEM. While they're WEAK AND YOUNG. He has NO CHOICE. They are a THREAT TO THE CROWN.

Another demon tears into existence as he picks himself off the ground and begins to lurch forward, a cloud of flickering, flashing particles announcing their arrival. They cower slightly away when they fully materialize, unable to fight the oppressive aura of the King that all demons are susceptible to, yet still, raise their arms in a protective stance between him and the child-shifter.

_Techno! Stop!_

Stop? WHY STOP NOW? When the world FINALLY bleeds as he does, the sky and land tear themselves open, jagged ravines and slanted crevasses creaking open with screaming magic that sparks and flashes with instability at the surging input of energy.

_Techno! Please, stop!_

The older demon explodes into particles just before he manages to wrap his bloody hand around their neck. The same sparks and flicker of lights appear a half-second before the demon themself does. 

WOULD THEY SCREAM IF HE BLED INTO THAT MAGIC?

He puts some energy back into his legs and dives for them once more, feinting a hard right with his Netherite war-axe and swiping a diagonal left cut with his short sword. DEMON BLOOD FANS INTO THE AIR, half evaporating in the OVERWORLD’S thin atmosphere, half bubbling as it sprays over them both, coating the already decaying grasslands. HE’D BEEN RIGHT, TO SMEAR HIS BLOOD UPON THE BLADE. IT’S DAMAGE OUTPUT WAS PARALLELED ONLY BY HIS AXE.

The demon screams, futilely clutching at their GAPING WOUND. From hip to shoulder, right to left, it was a sight to behold, ROYAL BLOOD BATTLING MILD HEALING MAGIC. Maybe passed from their kin or by the effect of the FOREST, WHO’S GUARDIAN HAD YET TO ARRIVE.

_TECHNO!_

The younger, despite their small form, rises from their kneel. TREASON, PUNISHABLE BY DEATH. He begins the slow walk over, leaving the older gasping and wheezing on their back.

Particles rip into existence between the two of them just as the child trips over their own feet, an arms-length from DEATH. He reaches for where he estimates the older's neck to materialize, but they duck out of the way just in time, raising a crossbow with weak arms. When he SWINGS, they dodge, vanishing and reappearing to his left. 

ONE LAST ATTEMPT BEFORE THEY LOSE THEIR LIFE. ADMIRABLE, IF FOOLISH.

An arrow tears into his flank. NOT DEADLY. He throws a dagger in their direction, watching carefully as they teleport once more, a smear solidifying on his other side, telegraphed by their faint glow. 

An arrow rips into his shoulder. TOO LOW TO CAUSE TRUE DAMAGE. The younger demon looks between them in sharp glances, scrambling backward as he made for them again. Then, as those particles flickered between them protectively once more—

He overreaches and snatches them by the neck, lifting them off the ground as their feet scramble for purchase. Their figure becomes fuzzy, a faint glow, but they look disoriented enough they don’t have enough strength to ease his vice claws or flicker away through the inbetween. THEIR BLOOD HAS A GLIMMER AS HIS CLAWS DIG IN, HIS OWN ONLY INTENSIFYING THEIR PAIN WITH HIS OWN ABILITY AS THEY BREAK THE SKIN OF HIS WRIST WITH THEIR WEAK STRUGGLES.

SUCH WAS THE WEAKNESS OF SENTIMENT.

_Technoblade._

He drops the elder demon at the name. The younger dives at his feet, wrapping their arms desperately around the larger. They don’t open their eyes as the youth shakes them, calling a name, a name he DOESN’T RECALL, CAN’T COMPREHEND.

THE GUARDIAN stands at the top of the hill they’d just descended. Their edges are smeared too, outlined in the same fires that crackle in the wind, in the distant forest they’d left to burn.

They stare down at him and for a moment, there is silence. No screaming. No roar of flames. No snarl of broken earth, no crack of shattering sky. There is no heartbeat in his ears or trickle over his skin as his lifeblood spilled upon neutral holy ground.

There’s no Technoblade, who slaughtered his way through Hell, who’s desire spoke louder than the Demon King’s calling as he stood before him and cut him down, who took and took and took from a King with no grudge until there was nothing left to take and nothing left of himself at all, who turned and ran despite everything, who inherited a bloody throne, an inevitability and the voices of the damned.

There’s no Philza, bound to his forest, to trees and life and everything that wasn’t sentient enough to sustain him, who collects the broken despite his inability to fix himself, who’s tree-like antlers seem so old, so heavy, so broken, missing pieces lost to time, edges whittled down because those points could be so sharp, and one little accident could ruin everything.

There’s just Techno. There’s just Phil.

For a moment, in the settling silence, Techno wonders if this is what the rest of his life will be.

Losing himself. Losing _them._

There’s a reason the kings come and go so quickly in the modern era. They say the position is haunted. If it can impose its Kingly Aura upon any demon who bears the title, who’s to say it doesn’t carry its own power over its holder?

There’s a reason there’s no one left alive to tell him. Dream had, reasonably, no ability or reason to tell him anything he knew. For all he really knows, it could be another of Dream's tricks. One last trick, left behind for whoever managed to dethrone him.

_(He remembers the fallen angel he’d left lying in the woods behind him, bright greens like the fields, rich browns like the earth, feather stained and sizzling as mixed blood spills. Another's parted lips screaming platitudes and sorrows as they were forced to retreat without them, secondary wings shaking as they framed their wet face. They take off into the trees, chased by his crossbow bolts. There had been a heavy thud, but he hadn’t stuck around to check.)_

_(It was no fallen angel. It was Tubbo, he suddenly recalls. Tubbo. Eret, too.)_

Techno doesn’t know if he wants that knowledge. The knowledge of its nature. Was it his own insanity, fueled by the countless lives he’s taken? The ghosts of past Kings? Something of a divine curse from the wars of old? Dream, or another curse placed by his numerous enemies? Or simply nothing at all?

_(He remembers the shapeshifter, ears flattening as they dove out of his reach, their claws tear an ugly set of scratches down his already scarred cheek. There is terror and horror in those too-wide eyes. There is nowhere to run but into the flames, but they dive in regardless, clutching their smoking hand.)_

_(It was no shapeshifter. It was Fundy, true to the end. Fundy.)_

That weight. He’s not sure if he could carry it.

He’s carrying so much. It’s so, so heavy.

 _Techno,_ Phil says. _Would you be surprised to know I knew this would happen?_

He lifts his head, feeling his fraying heart give one more wrench. This reality is too cruel.

_I knew, since I first lay my eyes on you, what you were. Only a certain kind of being could be a King, never mind a King of Hell. What did you think you were accomplishing, coming here?_

Techno stumbles back as, with a shift of his wings, Phil was suddenly before him. He shakes his head even as his tongue swallows back bile, blood, his words.

 _You’re unsalvageable, Techno,_ Phil says, voice curling dangerously around the vowels as he follows after him. The guardian took one long stride and yanked him back by the front of his bloody shirt until they were face to face, the other hand on his shoulder for emphasis.

_Techno, you need to wake up._

“Phil?” He asks, voice hoarse.

Between blinks, the flaming fields, the eclipsed sky, they all fall away to a stone room. Sweat damp sheets clenched tight in one hand, a doorframe chipping under his claws in the other.

Phil’s hand on his shoulder is cool as he gives him a small shake. “Techno? You alright?”

Techno takes a deep, deep breath, dropping both grips and his head as gravity reorients itself around him, tension dripping out of his tense muscles, already sore from a long day’s work on the farm.

The farm. To the east of the fields. The house, on the outside edge of Phil's forest.

They'd hosted a small get-together today, he reminds himself, Tubbo and Tommy diving through grasses with endless laughter and shrieks as Phil ran them through a gauntlet of games, Wilbur sneaking off to join the game as he himself dutifully picked up the slack.

Anything, for them. Days like today shouldn't be wasted or taken for granted, he'd learned. Phil had eventually come to help and they'd looked after their charges the rest of the evening, occasionally joining in even if his changes and shifts in posture occasionally spooked the others.

There was a part of him that would always hold those Hell hunter qualities. Their fear was understandable, he was a deadly force, the King no matter how much he muffled and suppressed the aura. Especially when he got rougher than he'd meant to be. They shake the healthy fear off easily enough, but the fact it was still there regardless, that he may never live a life with them without it there, too?

It's enough to disrupt his dreams.

“Yeah, sorry,” he mumbles, dragging a hand through his roots. “Bad, uh... nightmare.”

The darkness parts with his curtain of hair, Phil’s careful touch tucking it behind his ear, around his intact horn. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

Gods, no. The sleepwalking was new, but this was the farthest he’d gone yet. 

Phil, as always, seems to read his dim expression like a book. “Want to go check on the boys with me? Then back to my room?"

“Yeah,” he rasps. That’s all it takes, with Phil. The guardian links their arms, his mostly limp with his nightmare’s exhaustion, and they shuffle over to each room, peeking through the cracked doors.

Every surface in Tubbo’s room is littered with molting feathers, the teen himself spread eagle in the center of his nest of blankets and Techno’s large quilt, wings spread wide on either side of him while his secondary pair cover his face. His telltale snore is enough.

Tommy’s room is roughly neat and he’s easy to spot in his bed, disappearing face down into his pile of furs and puffy comforters, tail flicking in his sleep. He was finally starting to grow back to a more appropriate size, his feet dangling off the edge of the bed. He mumbles something in his sleep as he rolls over and they leave him to it.

Wilbur sleeps like the dead, silent and still, his head in his arms at his desk with a blanket thrown over his shoulders. His room is a mess, organized chaos, papers in stacks on the floor, his bed covered in open books marked with different colored bookmarks, dozens of hanging plants and flowers of all kinds.

“Eret and Fundy sounded like they were up to no good this past weekend,” Phil hums as they continue towards his room. “Niki was having trouble wrangling them, but said she’d send a letter if things got too out of hand.”

Techno clears his dry throat as best as he can, hiding a yawn. “It’s a good thing we’ve got Tubbo over, then, isn’t it.”

“You wanna meet up with them tomorrow?” He asks as they reach Phil’s room. “Could be fun.”

“Is... Dream gonna be there?”

Phil pushes him gently towards his large bed, taking his own seat in the large oak chair at the bedside and picking up a large tome. “No, he’s off in another land for a few days, something about George and cat magic.”

Techno crawls into bed, wrapping Phil’s quilt around him until his own scent is buried under petrichor, rich dirt, maple. “’Kay,” he mumbles, already feeling himself relax under the warmth of the guardian. “Sounds like a plan.”

“Go to sleep, Techno,” Phil hums, running dull fingers through his bangs a few times.

“‘Kay,” he repeats, yawning. Even as he begins to slip back into sleep, he can feel that gaze, piercing.

Philza is a frightening sort of being. As much as this terrifies him, it's also intimately comforting. Techno isn't alone, atop the world.

For once, sleep comes easy and free of nightmares.


End file.
